And the treats encourage them to like themselves says Robert Holden

And the treats encourage them to like themselves, says Robert Holden. "If you don't like yourself, you will never be happy - alone or with other people."At the end of the course, all three guinea pigs were far happier than they had been at the start, as their questionnaire scores proved. But the best evidence that the Jeremiahs can be transformed into Pollyannas was provided by Ponting's final brain scan. The trace had shifted so dramatically that it was now off the scale. "Her brain pattern indicated she was one of the happiest people I had ever seen," Davidson says Well, not quite. Western Samoa booked their place in the final of the Halifax Student Rugby League World Cup by finally overpowering the French at the end of a gripping match at Warrington last night. He resented what he saw as the regimented goal-setting which harked back to his successful and well- paid career as a salesman.

"There are two kinds of happiness: 'incentive happiness' and 'gratified happiness'. We get a good feeling when we know we can attain our goal, when we can see an end in sight. There is a very powerful sense of enthusiasm, optimism and power. This is associated with a release of dopamine, a brain chemical. Drugs like coke and amphetamine create this same feeling." Gratified happiness or gratification euphoria - when goals have been reached, when they can be ticked off that list - is due to a rush of endorphins.Keith Allan, 41, from Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, the happiest of the unhappy volunteers, according to the questionnaires, and someone who had made radical life-style changes in his search for happiness, actually found this part of the course the hardest.

She started with little lists of daily tasks which, when completed, gave her a real sense of achievement.Dr Richard Depue, of Cornell University, another prominent figure in the scientific search for happiness, says there is a link between achieving goals and being happy. The important thing was not to be too ambitious, which would have posed the risk of confirming their own worst fears about themselves - that they really were failures. Dawn Harrison, a thirtysomething private detective and mother of three from Devon - whose twinkly, happy demeanour belied a devastatingly low sense of self-esteem - found this the most beneficial part of the course. According to Professor Davidson, even a smile can help to shift the brain into a happier state "But it must be the right kind of smile.